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Kansas Lady Killer

For the last several years my buddy Joe has invited me to travel back to his family's farm in Kansas to hunt turkey. Finally this year I rearranged my schedule to make it happen, along with another buddy, Houston.

If you have never been out to the Midwest to hunt then you need to make it a priority to do so. Tags are OTC, the country is very accessible, and the amount of turkey that you can see out there is awesome! We ended up being out there a little early in the season to experience the full effect but still heard tons of birds gobbling off the roost as they were competing for supremacy with the local owls. The only downside is that once they hit the ground in the morning they were for the most part extremely quiet. We did have a group of 7 birds (3 Gobblers, and 4 Jakes) come into the field we were sitting opening morning. The Jakes came in close but the Gobblers stayed just out of reach as the strutted for each other. After seeing that I was sure that it was going to be a slam dunk hunt....but that wasn't the case.

The majority of the trip consisted of the birds either crossing through the field on the wrong end, strutting in adjacent fields, or hanging out in plain view on the neighbors' property. We tried our best to call them in but they just weren't ready for love.

I did however stumble across a group of birds hanging out behind Joe's cabin the first day of the hunt and of course I wasn't with a gun in my hand. During the middle of the second day we decided to try and walk through that same area and push the birds down to the fields we were going to be hunting that night. Well the birds around here don't like to run too much and would prefer to fly. And when a turkey rises up out of the grass with a beard hanging off its chest then it deserves to get shot at...

And if that bird look a little small to be a Gobbler, here's a couple more images

That's right, He was actually a She. It's not the first bearded hen that I've ever seen but it's the first that I've ever harvested. Confusing at first but cool nonetheless.

Unfortunately there weren't any other birds taken on the trip but it was definitely a great time. Houston did have some close calls with his bow in hand but the birds just stayed out of range each time. Hopefully next year we'll be able to catch them with they're a little hotter and get them to full commit.